The Trouble with Burlesque (in Classical Hollywood Cinema)

This essay tackles musical numbers indirectly inspired by the burlesque stage in classical Hollywood films from the late 1930s and 1940s. Those mock stripteases were sparse and carefully examined in the self-regulation process, mostly while the Production Code Administration was operating. I argue that the stakes in controlling those numbers went beyond the forbidden nudity. The article analyzes some film sequences through the prism of the PCA correspondence to define the boundaries between the rules and what was only “good taste” at the time. Through transforming and stylizing burlesque, the staging and performances in these numbers could seem to have erased their models. But the article shows how these paradoxical acts sometimes managed to bring up the spirit of burlesque theatre and empower the female performers, and therefore inspire some inexpressible trouble.